CIA Releases Top Secret Files From the 1960s and 1970s

June 28, 2007 01:02 PM

by
findingDulcinea Staff

The now-public documents catalog many of the CIA's actions throughout the 1960s and 1970s, confirming long-assumed activities including a failed assassination plot, domestic wiretapping operations, mind-altering drug experiments, and early intelligence gaffes.

On June 26 the Central Intelligence Agency released 702 pages of formerly Top Secret documents concerning many of its actions during The Cold War and Vietnam years. The documents, affectionately termed the "Family Jewels" within the Agency, range from the mundane to the scandalous.

Perhaps the most scandalous "Jewels" gem is a series of documents detailing the involvement of the mafia in an attempt on Fidel Castro's life. After the plot to poison the Cuban leader failed, the gangsters then used their knowledge to blackmail the CIA.

However, there is some debate as to how groundbreaking these revelations really are.

Most agree that the information contained in the "Jewels" isn't all that new, pointing to the large redacted sections of the papers as the Agency's real jewels. But perhaps the biggest point of contention for analysts is the motivation behind CIA Director General Michael Hayden's new penchant for transparency.

The conjecture varies from wanting to contrast the seeming lawlessness of the CIA's early years with today's law-minded methods (Hayden's stated reasoning), to depicting it as a veiled threat to current and future White House officials: "Politicize intelligence and you'll find your name on the front page of the newspaper."

Regardless, the documents' release and the issues surrounding the legality of domestic spying operations they raise are particularly timely as the Senate Judiciary Committee has just subpoenaed the White House for documents concerning the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. The Senate has given the White House until July 18 to produce documents which it believes recount the internal debate over the program's legality.

In a message to CIA employees, Director Gen. Michael Hayden said that release of the documents was part of the agency's "social contract" with the American people, insisting that current CIA practices are lawful.

In the early 1960s the CIA enlisted the help of various mafia bosses in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, according to official agency memos. Although attempts to poison the Cuban leader failed, the CIA's relationship with the mob continued: the mobsters used their knowledge to blackmail the CIA into doing them favors that included setting up an illegal wiretap and blocking one gangster's court-ordered deportation.

Philip Taubman, deputy editor of the New York Times' editorial page, found accounts of one domestic spying program, called "Project Mockingbird," that "was approved at the highest levels of the Kennedy administration." The documents describe the "C.I.A. wiretapping of two Washington reporters (unnamed) from March 12, 1963 to June 15, 1963," and include "the intercepting of calls, executed under the authority of John McCone, the Director of Central Intelligence . . . in coordination with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Joseph Carroll."

Dr. Amy Zegart, an Associate Professor of U.S. foreign policy and public management at UCLA, not only found memos referring to a domestic spying program targeting radical college students called "The Restless Youth Study," but also discovered documents discussing "how to keep [it] secret and acknowledging that [it was]–what's the word?–illegal."

According to other memos, former spy, White House employee, and engineer of the first Watergate burglary E. Howard Hunt actually called the CIA's External Employment Assistance Branch shortly before the break-in looking for a "retiree or resignee who was accomplished at picking locks." The memo doesn't mention which lock Hunt planned on picking.

The papers also revealed that the CIA conducted experiments with mind-altering drugs. One set of documents details the Agency's attempts to identify the behavior-modifying effects of various pharmaceutical drugs by testing commercial drugs with "unfavorable side effects" on "volunteer members of the Armed Forces." Another document describes an instance in which Agency scientists administered hallucinogens like LSD to "unwitting subjects."

In addition to admitting various illegal ventures, the CIA's papers also disclosed a number of embarrassing intelligence gaffes dealing with China and Russia. In one instance, agency analysts predicted the fall of Mao Tse-Tung a full 14 years before the leader actually died. Another report meant to identify Nikita Khrushchev's probable successors hardly mentioned the man who engineered his ouster, Leonid Brezhnev. The mistakes point out the seeming lack of sophistication in intelligence during the period, as analysts relied on many of the same sources of information as those available to civilians.

The CIA's Chief Historian David Robarge contributes to a New York Times online panel by downplaying much of the hype surrounding the documents' release: "The compendium is not a 693-page catalogue of crime and immorality . . . there are only passing references to already disclosed assassination plots and drug-testing programs and next to nothing of importance about purely foreign operations."

USA Today writes in its editorial titled "Roots of CIA abuses stretch to 1600 Pa. Ave." that "the documents lead to one inescapable conclusion: The blame for the CIA's behavior lies less with the agency than with presidents of both parties who misused it to do their dirty work. Many of the documented abuses originated not at the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters but at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

In his article "Why the CIA is Airing its Dirty Laundry," Time magazine writer Robert Baer explains that CIA Director Michael Hayden may be trying to send a message to the White House with these documents: "Hayden's plan is not only to draw a line under the past but make a point to this and future White Houses: Politicize intelligence and you'll find your name on the front page of the newspaper."

David Corn from The Nation considers the redacted sections of the "Family Jewels" in his article "What's the missing Jewel?", pointing out that even "the very first secret in these papers is deleted." Corn continues "Hayden, the CIA chief deserves some credit for releasing the 'Family Jewels' . . . [but] there still are secrets from the past the CIA will not disclose. Are these legitimate secrets that ought to be kept from the public to protect national security, or are they embarrassments the Agency is not willing to face?"

Dr. Amy Zegart uses the New York Times’ online panel to point out that the CIA's "Family Jewels" represent only a small, outdated fraction of the secrets kept from the public: "Don't revel in the glasnost just yet. There are still troves upon troves of documents that the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies are keeping locked away. Dirty tricks from the 1960's and '70s make for interesting reading. But understanding what went wrong before 9/11 makes for better intelligence."

In his article, "Comparing Today's Tactics With Those Used in the Past," Scott Shane of the New York Times asks "Do the actions of the intelligence agencies in the era of Al Qaeda, which include domestic eavesdropping without warrants, secret detentions and interrogations arguably bordering on torture, already match or even eclipse those of the Vietnam War period?"

The CIA is the successor of the United States' first central intelligence organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), created during WWII. After the conclusion of the war in 1945, President Truman disbanded the OSS. In 1947, Congress approved the National Security Act, establishing the CIA as an independent agency responsible for intelligence gathering and evaluation. However, fears that the CIA would turn into a secret police force with the power to spy on Americans led Congress to prohibit the agency from domestic law enforcement activities.

The Senate Judiciary Committee investigating the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program has issued subpoenas to the White House, demanding that it turn over documents containing internal discussions about the program's legality and agreements with telecommunications companies that cooperated with the program. The subpoenas have set a July 18 deadline for the White House to produce the documents.